About

$10,046

pledged of $9,000 goal

115

backers

Hello!

We are Tugboat Collective, a new Brooklyn-based theater company, and we are raising money to fund our first season. We are performers, designers, directors, and writers who are passionate about the medium of the theater and the live event as a vital form of art in our time. We are also committed to presenting original work that addresses the questions and challenges of the here and now. Like a tiny tugboat pushing a tanker upriver, we hope, small as we are, to change the culture that we live in through our work.

In this inaugural season, we are presenting three pieces:

First up, running December 10-16, 2012 at the fantastic Brooklyn Lyceum, is Moon & Marble, a silent clown play first developed by Eben Hoffer and Liza Curtiss at Williams College in 2010 and since workshopped in both Seattle and New York by director Sarah E.R. Grossman. Structurally unique and hyperreal, this play is an exploration in the use of the body as a storytelling instrument through the episodic journey of a boy and girl in pursuit of a traveling peddler. A story about love, trauma, loneliness, and the peculiar agency of the objects with which we surround ourselves, it invites the viewer to reconsider the importance of small things we may have lost.

Second, scheduled for March, is a piece called Obedient Steel, written by Chloe Carter Brown and workshopped with the company and director Rebecca Wear since last April. Drawing from the history of the development of the Atomic Bomb and its cultural impact, Obedient Steel is the story of how we digest fear as individuals and as a community. What has it provoked in our understanding of ourselves? How has it changed the way we live our lives? And what can it teach us about the culture of fear in the new millennium?

Lastly, in late spring, Tugboat will be staging a rock musical called The Violet Road, created by Isaac Hoffer and written by Chloe Carter Brown with music by Isaac and Eben Hoffer. The Violet Road is an impressionistic journey through an imaginary world where Jesse, a young man caught between childhood and adulthood, must face the separation and loss of his family through the barely-remembered fantastical characters that populate his subconscious. As he wanders the road looking for his lost father, Jesse must face his greatest demons alone and in a place where all is possible. The creative team has been working on the piece throughout the summer and the company recently workshopped it on our Long Island retreat.

As thrilled as we are to be bringing you this work, there is a hurdle to face: financing a run in New York City. Though we as a company are deeply committed to running a tight financial ship, renting a performance venue for a run of ONE of these shows will cost somewhere around $3,000. We here are asking all of you out there to contribute to the Tugboat war chest for the year. With this $9,000 fund, we hope to make a dent in the expenses of this season's productions so that we can all see this work come to fruition.

As can be seen on the right, there are tons of awards for those who are ready and able to help us out. All of this material is entirely exclusive to our Kickstarter campaign and has never been sold or distributed anywhere else. And for our most generous patrons, we are prepared to create original work to order- bespoke poems, playlets and performances, exactingly tailored and profoundly kickass. (Seriously, come at us. We are excited to show you our chops.)

Theater is the work; it is the labor, the product, and the artist all inhabiting the same moment with an audience to watch it happen. There is nothing that the eight of us value more than those moments and we are enormously excited to share them with you. Please make a contribution to our season so that you can see fun, provocative, and accessible theater produced independently by young theater artists. Thank you for your attention and thank you unceasingly much for your support.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $1,000 or more
About $1,000

We all create an original short-form play on the topic or object of your choice (or adapt the work of your choice), present it to you in the manner most convenient given your personal geography, CD and digital audio files from "The Violet Road," print from "The What Dance," and signed thank-you card.